Mitsubishi MV Triton Review: 40,000kms With The MV Triton

Introduction: Why the MV Triton Matters to PRDX

Back in May 2024, when PRDX was just a twinkle in my eye, the new MV Triton had just started to appear on showroom floors in Australia. Ours, the graphite grey GLS in the pics, had arrived at Flight Motors in Loxton, South Australia. I needed this car to be something special, a platform that would seriously challenge the competition, but I was also hoping it wasn’t perfect, as perfect cars don’t need mods.

To me, the New-Gen MV Triton isn’t just another dual-cab—it’s the backbone of PRDX. This candid review and road test, forged across 40,000+ product development kilometres, lays it all bare: the highs, the lows, and any rough edges that surfaced along the way.

MV Triton Styling and Interior

The exterior design? That’s your call. My initial take was, “great body, pity about the face,” though that front end grows on you—much like it has with Tritons since the ML debuted in late 2006. Blacking out the chrome and grey on the GLS with satin black wrap, improves the look substantially.

Inside, the layout and execution rival the best in this class. Space abounds, and the infotainment screen hits a sweet spot—sized sensibly, sidestepping the oversized flat-panel trend some brands chase, forgetting humans still pilot these machines.

Mitsubishi has incorporated decent-sized knobs and switches to manage audio and climate controls, which is a welcome relief. Rather than slapping an iPad-style display on the dash to cut costs, they’ve gone with a genuine dashboard—in this case, an upgraded version of the one you’ll find in the current Navara. Once you’re used to the various functions, it’s a very usable setup that’s easy to see and relatively intuitive.

As always—and Mitsubishi, along with other legacy manufacturers, will learn this and no doubt other lessons the hard way—there are still too many hard, scratchy interior surfaces. Manufacturers will tell you they persist with this practice for wear and durability reasons, but then they’ll do something equally stupid and add hi-gloss piano black trims to high-wear areas, like around the cupholders in the MV. The Chinese manufacturers, like BYD and GWM, have worked out that these utes have evolved way beyond being rough-and-tumble workhorses and are now kitting the higher-spec versions out like SUVs.

That said, the interior of the MV Triton is a good one in the ways that matter most: ergonomically, functionally, and by being a comfortable place to spend time. It’s quiet too—I’ve had a few passengers comment favourably regarding the hushed interior experience. The front seats are genuinely decent and “road trip ready”. I’ve regularly driven 700 km stints without stopping, and there’s never been a numb bum or bad back to deal with on arrival. After 40,000 km and numerous undignified entrances and exits, I’m yet to notice any wear on the driver’s seat, armrests, or steering wheel, which is indicative of the genuine step-up in overall quality of this new Triton and the materials that are being used in the cabin.

I do have a couple of gripes regarding the interior of my MV, though I’ll state for the record that it is an early-build car. The first is a dashboard rattle that sounds like corn kernels cooking off. This rattle isn’t unique to my car, and some (not all) of the other early adopters are experiencing the same mysterious dashboard noise, which is caused by loose wiring connectors and/or a poorly secured GPS aerial. I believe that dealers are now fixing the affected cars, and no doubt more recent stock is leaving Thailand with tighter nuts.

There’s also an intermittent—funny how all of these annoying noises seem to come and go—creaking noise coming from the driver’s seat, which I’m now almost certain is the seat-belt clip stalk [30/04/25 – turns out it was the seat-belt clip stalk and it just needed a spray of lube]. Again, it only seems to affect some of the earlier cars. More nut tightening is probably required, and there’s no doubt some older guy out there wanting to leave a comment like, “Never buy the early build examples of a completely new model, son…”

The ol’ bugger might have a point.

Intermittent noises aside, everything else about the interior of the Triton seems to work, and work well.

Well except for that one intermittent – there’s that word again – check engine light that has been coming and going since new. It’s AdBlue sensor related and there’s a Mitsubishi hotfix software update for it, that hasn’t worked, yet. Hopefully there’s more work being done on that one.

Drivetrain and Driving

The well-travelled PRDX MV Triton can almost drive itself up and back down the Western Highway between Adelaide and Melbourne—a road trip that’s been undertaken every few weeks over the last year to visit springmakers and suppliers and test the various components of the PRDX suspension kits. We’ve also thrown in some trips to Sydney (sorting out the Bilsteins) and numerous B-road adventures between Melbourne and Flight Motors in the Riverland.

The MV Triton is a completely different driving experience to any Triton that came before it. It’s a massive upgrade and one that challenges the so-called class leaders in the 4WD ute segment—and challenges them soundly. It’s quiet, smooth, powerful, and a supremely comfortable long-distance touring vehicle, once you’ve fixed the suspension. Yeah, remember above how I was hoping the MV wouldn’t be perfect? Well, it turns out that the suspension isn’t brilliant. But more on that later.

The 4N16 2.4L bi-turbo (150 kW/470 Nm) is, according to Mitsubishi, a mostly complete redesign of the old 2.4L single turbo found in the MQ and MR. The outputs are modestly improved, up from 132 kW/430 Nm in the MR, but the way this new engine works is completely different. There’s little to no lag off the line, and there’s oodles of torque through the rev range. As turbo-diesels go, this one scores an 8/10 for the way it conducts itself.

Deft use of the throttle will have the MV making the most of the available torque to waft through most of every drive with unfussed ease. When pushed into the upper limits of its rev range, the 4N16 continues to pull hard but gets a little thrashy sounding, which is perhaps the only negative I’ve come across during my driving. If you punch the throttle, kick down a gear, and max the revs, that thrashiness is quite noticeable and detracts from what is, in every other way, a very accomplished engine.

Folks that tow things, unlike me, are all giving the MV Triton’s drivetrain a big thumbs up for its ability to handle vans that are pushing the limits of the Triton’s Gross Combination Mass (GCM). If you head over to the New-Gen MV Triton Club Australia Facebook page, there’s a chap who clocked up 100,000 km+ delivering vans around Australia in an MV Triton. He was very happy with the way the MV towed, and from memory, the only casualties were the stock shocks, which would leak semi-consistently.

If you’re a Triton veteran like me, you’ll appreciate the fact that the new 4N16 is finally fitted with hydraulic valve lash adjusters, which means no more expensive manual “sound checks” and adjustments at the 60,000 km service.

The MV Triton runs AdBlue to meet the current Euro 6 emissions regulations, but it’s not the big deal some people seem to think it might be. I’ve been topping up the AdBlue tank every 10–12,000 km, or approximately every three months. It takes a few minutes, and if you use the pump at a service station, it’ll cost less than $2.00 per litre. The flip side is that AdBlue has allowed the Mitsubishi engineers to extract more performance and efficiency from the engine while meeting the required emissions standards, and I regularly see fuel usage ranging from 6.7 L/100 to 7.9 L/100 at highway speed, depending on wind speed and direction. That consistently achieved fuel efficiency rivals the far more complex and less flexible hybrid utes that are hitting the market. This is the first Triton I’m not going to bother fitting a long-range fuel tank to.

Unfortunately, Mitsubishi dropped the paddle-shifts found in the upper-spec MR Tritons, and in the MV, you have no choice but to use the centre console’s auto shifter if you want manual control of gear changes. It doesn’t have the quick, crisp shifts that the paddle-shifter offered in the MR, but the gearbox itself is so well tuned that you could argue the paddle-shifters aren’t needed. I used to use them regularly in the MR because it was always running a gear too high and would need knocking down on a regular basis—you know, down hills or rolling into a roundabout.

The MV, by comparison, has a knack of always being in the right gear, including changing down as you slow down rather than trying to change down when you want to accelerate. The MV has copped some criticism from owners for holding gears too long, but I think it’s one of the few cars that I’ve driven in recent years that has the gear management just about right. My only gearbox-related frustration occurs on steep hills, like the long, drawn-out uphill sections of the Eastern Freeway run into Adelaide, where the MV will shuffle between 5th and 6th gears. When it drops a gear, the revs peak, and that high-rev thrashiness I mentioned earlier kicks in.

The biggest change our 3” exhaust made was that it allowed the MV to cruise the Eastern, mostly holding 6th. I suspect the regular shuffling between gears was more about managing EGTs than any lack of power and torque, and our exhaust upgrade would definitely be reducing EGTs under load.

On-Road Dynamics

Now for the suspension. When you first drive the MV Triton (GLS or GSR), you’ll think it has a soft, comfortable ride, but as you spend more time with it, you’ll notice jarring up through the front end over inspection plates or broken bitumen (road imperfections that the wheel drops into) and a benign, soggy, disconnected feel to the chassis through fast bends or on rough roads.

At highway speeds, the otherwise excellent electric steering feels heavy and lifeless on centre and is reluctant to move smoothly from that position. Steering aside, the MV will waft along quite comfortably on the open road—right up until you hit some undulations, at which point it will rapidly lose its composure and belly flop between the bitumen waves like a big ol’ whale. If the undulations run into or through a corner, the dynamics deteriorate further.

The flawed dynamics—the belly flopping, the soggy-feeling chassis, and heavy-on-centre steering feel—are all due to an imbalance between the stock car’s front and rear suspension setups. Suspension works across the diagonal of the vehicle, or in other words, the diagonally opposite corners either work in harmony or, as is the case with the MV, duke it out.

These ride and handling traits, for me at least, are the only serious issue that I have with the stock MV. In comparison, our 50 mm lowered PRDX GLS is a dynamic and fun car to drive, with oodles of body control and steering finesse, and it rides beautifully, even on it’s 285 x 50 profile 20″ tyres—so much so that every drive puts a smile on my face. It took 9 months, 40,000 km of testing, three front coil changes, six rear leaf pack changes, and three shock valving changes to get the PRDX MV Triton to where I wanted it. Along the way, we realised that doing it right meant binning all of the stock components.

The suspension, in my opinion, is one thing that has to be spot-on if you really want to enjoy owning and driving a car. When I look at the MV, I see Mitsubishi’s long-forgotten (by them but not by me) motorsport DNA shining through. It’s dimensioned right, looks right (mostly), and in upper-spec configurations, it features permanent AWD at the twist of a dial. This car, when the suspension is sorted, is a bullet on winding roads (yeah…I know it’s a diesel), and a surefooted one at that—an evolution of the Triton that, with a few choice modifications, could easily be turned into a Triton Evolution.

Hmmm… now there’s an idea.

When you consider how much on-road driving the average 4WD dual-cab pick-up does—perhaps 90 to 100 per cent of its lifetime—you start wondering why so many are being modified to use more fuel, reduce braking efficiency, stuff up the gearing, destroy the handling, and generally induce truck-like on-road manners. Must be all that influencing.

Off-Road Dynamics

To be completely honest, I never took our MV off-road in stock form, and it’s only seen a few Flinders Ranges gorge roads and fast corrugated dirt roads with its current lowered suspension.

Our Bilstein-based lowered suspension is brilliant on fast dirt roads and corrugations. It’s not designed for rock-hopping or High Country tracks, but it’ll easily out-drive any lifted 4×4, on most other types of roads. Easily.

Other than that, I can’t comment on the stock MV’s off-road chops.

New Efficiency and Safety Technologies: Not as Annoying as You Might Think

The one system on the MV that challenges the suspension for the dubious honour of being the most frustrating is the engine stop/start. It’s clunky, unrefined, inept, and exceptional at triggering otherwise calm and mature drivers. It can be switched off before each drive by a frustratingly difficult-to-locate button that sits low and to the right of the driver, or you can pull the plug on it completely. There is literally a plug you can disconnect under the plastic bonnet latch panel. Disconnecting the system doesn’t generate any error codes or cause any issues. Do it—do it now.

The lane assist function can also have its moments. It can intervene and actively steer for you in situations where you want to cross the marked lines. It’s just doing its job, and it’s mostly unobtrusive, but I choose to switch it off before long trips—push button, push knurled wheel, push button—provided I’m feeling suitably peppy. If I’m not, I leave it on.

I suspect that the favourite bone of contention, or concern, for MV Triton owners and would-be buyers is the Driver Monitoring System, or DMS. When the MV was first released, this system received a thorough roasting from some in the media—and for good reason at the time, as it was a little too enthusiastic about saving drivers from themselves. However, a software update was released for the DMS in 2024 that, in my experience, has made it thoroughly bearable. I’m rarely bothered by the system on most urban drives now, and when it does tell me off, I’m genuinely not looking at the road. I’m of the opinion that, like me, most owners/humans will adapt to the DMS relatively quickly and, for the most part, forget that it’s there. I still tend to turn it off on long trips, but that’s only because I flick between the dash functions semi-regularly, and the DMS knows that if I’m doing that, I’m not watching the road…

The DMS is another system that you can unplug, but be warned, while it won’t cause any obvious issues, it will continually log error codes in the background that the dealer will have to clear before running any software upgrades at services. Fixing requires plugging the DMS back in, clearing the codes, and then running the software update. Honestly, it’s just easier leaving it plugged in.

In Summary

Prior to the release of the MV, Tritons have been considered by those not in the know to be the runt of the 4WD dual-cab litter—the cheaper alternative to the real offerings like Ranger, HiLux, and D-MAX.

That was mostly bullshit regurgitated by people who wouldn’t know, but hey, Mitsubishi discounted like a champion, and when you discount your product, it’s normal for people to assume that a cheaper price means the product is inferior. The facts, often overlooked or completely unknown to ‘professional reviewers’ and social media know-it-alls, have always told a different story when it comes to the Triton.

For years, since 2006 in fact, the Triton has featured a class-leading AWD/4WD drivetrain, the largest diffs, some of the strongest and most reliable engines, and, in the last decade, bulletproof automatic gearboxes and excellent traction control. They were one of the first – maybe even the first – dual cab with a standard rear diff lock available in upper spec models.�

The ML Triton pioneered the J-cab with a rear seat design that could reasonably comfortably be used by humans and was the first of these 4WD dual-cabs to be considered ‘car-like’ in the way it drove. The MQ and MR Tritons pioneered an all-alloy turbo-diesel engine that was backed by top-shelf Aisin auto gearboxes. Unfortunately, all of that good stuff was jammed into a narrow body with a not-quite-right wheelbase, so any momentum that might have been built up was lost, and the Triton continued to play second fiddle to a way overpriced and underwhelming, re-skinned Colorado, the handsome but impossible to trust, Ranger and that old thing that Toyota sells which was underdone back in 1814. It’s funny how life works.

The MV Triton resets everything Triton and seriously challenges the incumbents, and this is what you’d be hearing in the media, if Mitsubishi’s marketing budget included the requisite amounts of palm greasing lotion that gets you onto the podium at 4WD Car Of The Year awards, or front running the field in comparison reviews.

The MV isn’t perfect, thankfully, but damn, it’s a properly good machine, and one that should be given serious consideration if you’re shopping for a new dual-cab pick-up.